The Charge

"It's great seeing people stick it to authority." "Yes,
I'll remember that next time you give me an acting note."
"Warren, 'Sober up' is not an acting note."

Opening Statement

Full of puppets, celebrity guest stars, and a disproportionate amount of
sexual innuendos, Greg The Bunny is like the inbred son of
Married…With Children and Sesame Street run amuck, tearing
about the town drunk on a bender…brought to you by the letter B and from
donations from viewers like you.

The DVD tagline on the cover of Greg The Bunny: The Complete Series
reads: "TV wasn't ready for him. Are you?" This is especially ironic
considering that Fox cancelled the series after less than a dozen episodes. But
now the show finally gets its day in court, splendidly packaged for your
capitalistic consuming pleasure.

Facts of the Case

There are currently 3.2 million puppets living in the United States (or, as
they prefer to be called, "Fabricated Americans"). They have jobs and
go to work, living side-by-side with their fleshy comrades, trying to squeak out
a living in pursuit of the American dream just like everyone else.
Unfortunately, racial barriers still separate puppets from people, and a
down-and-out puppet can have a hard time finding stable employment (outside of
Easter, at least).

Greg the Bunny is such an individual. His roommate Jimmy is a mid-twenties
layabout, and they both spend a lot of time drinking and playing video games.
Greg's true ambition is to work on a children's show, the one job where puppets
and people stand on equal footing in the pursuit of wholesome children's
edutainment. In particular, he has his sights set on "Sweetknuckle
Junction," a low-rated kid's show that Jimmy's father just happens to be
the producer/director of! Greg finally convinces Jimmy to call in a favor to get
him an interview for a delivery boy, or an office gopher position…anything
just to be on the set!

When Greg arrives, he inadvertently wanders into the audition's casting call
for a new star. Jimmy's father Gil (Eugene Levy) and network representative
Alison (Sarah Silverman) both are taken by Greg's infectious energy and
likeability, and offer him a job. Of course, when Jimmy shows up on the set and
announces himself as Greg's "agent," things get a bit sticky. When Gil
discovers that his new casting choice is a rank amateur, he tries to send them
both packing, but in order to cover his mistake from Alison and the network, he
gives Greg a shot on-camera…and the new star of "Sweetknuckle
Junction" is born!

This DVD contains all thirteen episodes from the show's decisively short run
on network television (including two that never made it to air.) The episodes
are presented in production order, not by airing date:

• "Welcome to Sweetknuckle Junction" The first
episode. Re-read previous few paragraphs for plot synopsis, dummies.

• "Sock Like Me" After puppet racial slurs are
discovered on the bathroom walls (the dreaded "s-word"), the cast and
crew are ordered into puppet racial sensitivity training. Junction Jack in
particular seems hostile at the though of the training, and the culprit's
identity seems obvious…

• "Dottie Heat" Greg gets a schoolboy crush on
ditzy Dottie, and when Gil assigns them to sing a special "friendship"
song, the rest of the puppets exchange knowing glances…apparently, Dottie
gets awfully "friendly" when she practices. She invites Greg over to
her house that evening for some "rehearsals," and the next morning,
Greg has some very interesting stories to tell to the gang…

• "SK-2.0" (AKA "How the Count Got His 'Blah'
Back)" After testing poorly, the network puts pressure on the show to
re-invent itself to a younger audience. Seizing his opportunity, Jimmy becomes
the creative consultant and transforms the show into a quick-cutting, rap
music-playing MTV-style extravaganza. Get ready for SK-2.0!

• "Piddler on the Roof" Warren, desperate to flex
his acting muscles, tries to pressure Gil into allowing a Shakespearian
monologue or two, but Gil blames the network (and Alison) for nixing the bad
idea. Drunk and enraged, Warren "accidentally" mistakes Alison's open
sunroof on her Mercedes sedan for a…well, a urinal. The next day at work,
boy oh boy, is Alison "pissed off."

• "Rabbit Redux" (AKA "Rochester Returns") Greg, plagued by terrible guilt-induced nightmares about Rochester, the
rabbit whom he replaced on Sweetknuckle Junction coming back to kill him, tracks
down Rochester selling maps to celebrity homes on the streets and persuades Gil
to let him come back to the show. Rochester seems to be doing great…that
is, until he drops dead on the set!

• "Father & Son Reunion" After getting
divorced from his wife after she leaves him for Jimmy's high school gym teacher,
Gil realizes he has been a terribly distant and unavailable father. He makes a
pledge to spend more time with his son. Their first father-son activity
together? Egging the gym teacher's car!

• "Jimmy Drives Gil Crazy" This episode features
half-naked slutty Catholic schoolgirls and a high-speed car chase with Corey
Feldman in a stolen Mercedes. What else do you need to know?

• "Greg Gets Puppish" After meeting with a
Puppish community leader, Greg embraces his racial ancestry and tries to use
Sweetknuckle Junction as a voice for Puppish civil rights and racial tolerance.
Actually, scratch that "Greg" business…Greg is a flesh man's
name, after all. His Puppish name is Bizzleburp. Got that? BIZZLEBURP.

• "Surprise!" A reporter shows up to write an
article on Sweetknuckle Junction, and in particular, about how the family unity
continues behind the stage. Only problem is, Junction Jack's birthday is today,
and nobody planned anything, or even remembered. So, in order to look for the
reporter, they break into his house for a last-minute surprise party. Also,
Jimmy and Greg both want to have sex with the reporter. How's that for family
unity?

• "The Jewel Heist" This is quite possibly the
classiest television episode to ever air on network television. Also, a dog gets
circumcised, but the two are unrelated.

• "The Singing Mailman" When an aspiring actor
discovers an X-rated tape of Dottie, he threatens to post it on the internet
unless she gets him a job on the show. Dottie gets him an audition as a singing
mailman, but the cast and crew hate him, and with good reason. He sucks. He
really, really sucks. Dottie, desperate to preserve her honor, now must convince
the gang that he should stay on the show, lest her terrible secret be known to
the world. By "secret," I mean her boobies.

• "Blah Bawls" Count Blah hasn't had a date in
years, probably because he spends all his free time at his wife's gravestone
crying hysterically. Jimmy and Greg take Blah out to a singles bar, where he
meets an old friend: Warren's soon-to-be-divorced estranged wife. They laugh
pityingly for both having been dragged to such a place by their friends, and
manage to sneak away together. Of course, when they wake up in bed the next day,
Count Blah may have some explaining to do to his best friend Warren…

The Evidence

Even when considering the typical basement-level sophistication and maturity
of a typical Fox television show, Greg The Bunny definitely pushes the
debauchery envelope with amusing sexual innuendos and playful subtlety
masquerading as filth…err, which is to say, puppet filth. Now, puppet
filth is hilarious filth, no doubt about it—you haven't seen funny until
you see a tiny cute angel teddy bear go into a washroom stall, make horrible
digestive bowel noises and scream out for mercy—but puppet filth is
definitely still filth. Yes, the humor is lowbrow, but when puppets are making
dick-and-fart jokes, the jokes become ironic and avant-garde and…err,
transcend into sophisticated dick-and-fart jokes. Yeah, that's it. After all,
only a show with sophisticated humor would have a sequence where a dog gets
castrated and his testicles get replaced with Sammy Davis Jr. commemorative
eyeballs that play an electronic version of "Mr. Bojangles." I mean,
sophisticated goes without saying!

While the show certainly embodies all things holy on Fox (gratuitous sexual
references, innuendoes and entendres, cursing, general filth and debauchery, et
cetera), the show struck a peculiar balance between downright seediness and
wholesome sweetness that worked incredibly well. Part of the charm in Greg
The Bunny is viewing a puppet-filled world, full of things like foot-high
doors with knobs built into regular doors to allow puppets to enter, "NO
PUPPETS" signs hanging outside of restaurants, and so on. Sure, puppets
farting makes for great laughs, but Crank Yankers is still on the air.
What Greg The Bunny did was integrate the puppets into the real world,
playing it totally straight; which is hard to do, clearly, because you can see
the cracks of laughter on the corners of every human cast member's face
throughout the show, all the time. This was a show that cracked the creators up
on a daily basis, and it shines through on every take.

As it turns out, Greg The Bunny had intended to be a very different
kind of show than it ultimately became. The creators had envisioned the show to
be almost entirely "improv-style," a free-for-all puppet fest with the
puppets staying in character and the actors simply improvising dialogue with
them, a la The Larry Sanders Show (minus Garry Shandling of
course…though he does look animatronic and puppet-ish from time to time).
As the cast and crew repeatedly emphasize through the supplementary features,
the "real show" took place between takes, where they cracked one
another up on a regular basis. Alas, the realities of network television soon
reared their ugly head, and what had intended to be a wonderfully spontaneous
show full of excellent ad-libbing actors (Eugene Levy and Sarah Silverman for
example) rapidly descended into structure, script, and rehearsals. The show is
still funny the way it is, but to hear the cast and crew lament, one gets the
impression that we missed out on something truly hilarious and wonderful.

And how could you not crack up with these characters around all day? My
personal favorite: Professor Ape (AKA Warren Demontague), the Vicodan-popping,
womanizing, vodka-swilling Shakespearian monkey stuck in a dead-end job, and
quite possibly the jerkiest puppet ever constructed. Of course, there's the Bela
Lugosi-knockoff Count Blah (blah), who ended up having his routine ripped off by
a PBS puppet with a fake accent, and Tardy the Turtle, whose name I fear has
nothing to do with punctuality. Plus, Gary Oldman and Corey Feldman are in it.
That alone almost guarantees a certain level of awesomeness.

However, like so many ill-fated Fox shows, Greg The Bunny was hauled
off the air after eleven episodes, never to be seen again. I have a feeling that
there exists a group of people inside Fox's television department possessing fat
wallets and particularly sadistic senses of humor who gain pleasure by
developing eclectic, edgy, and unexpected television properties simply for the
pleasure of unceremoniously canceling them for a new mid-season reality show
with the pick-and-choose title formula of "My Big Fat ____."

Well, either that, or the network is run by monkeys…actual monkeys. I
assume Fox's television selection process involves the monkeys hurling darts at
the program timeslot board, and whichever program gets struck the most gets
cancelled, regardless of ratings, popularity, or critical acclaim. Doubtful, you
say? Take a look at some of the shows Fox has cancelled over the last few years,
and then come up with a more plausible explanation. I dare you.

Fox may know how to cancel good shows, but luckily, they also know how to
put out fantastic DVDs. Greg The Bunny: The Complete Series looks and
sounds great, and has enough supplementary features to keep even the most bitter
and jaded fan satisfied. The show simply looks excellent on DVD with decent
black levels, contrast and detail, and with no visible defects or major problems
detectable. Colors and black levels are naturally balanced, neither too vivid
nor washed out. Some grain is occasionally noticeable, but this is from the
source material (the show was shot on high-definition digital cameras) and not a
fault of the transfer itself. The audio comes in English Dolby Surround 2.0, and
though the mix makes sparing use of the rear channels for its music and
environmental sound effects, the track sounds functional, being neither
particularly outstanding nor disappointing in any fashion. Overall, Greg The
Bunny has a very solid technical presentation with few complaints.

Extras? Oh, we got extras. First up, we get six commentary tracks spread
across thirteen episodes, each containing a different combination of cast, crew,
puppeteers, and puppets (yes, some of the puppets even contribute their own
commentary tracks, a la Spinal Tap). The various personalities
contributing at one time or another to the audio tracks are (deep breath):
co-creator Dan Milano; director/editor Brent Carpenter; writer Bill Freiberger;
production designer Jim Dultz; music supervisor Howard Paar; prop master Brad
Elliot; actors Seth Green, Dina Waters, Sarah Silverman, and Bob Gunton;
puppeteers Drew Massey, Victor Yerrid, and James Murray; and puppets Greg the
Bunny, Warren Demontague, Count Blah, Tardy the Turtle, Rochester Rabbit, Susan
the Monster, and more. Whew. Not only are the commentary tracks chock full of
juicy technical details and puppeteer tricks, but the commentary tracks are
almost as funny as the show itself…especially the track with the puppets.
Oh, mercy me.

Second, we get episode-specific deleted and extended scenes with optional
commentary by show creator Dan Milano. If you added each episode's deleted
material for the entire DVD together, you would get maybe twenty minutes worth
of additional material, which is not too shabby. A nine-minute short film called
"Tardy Delivery," filmed on the set of Sweetknucle Junction and
featuring Tardy the Turtle attempting to deliver an express post letter is also
included, and this was simply made for fun. And it is fun. Getting tired yet?
Wait…we get behind-the-scene stills, conceptual art, puppet auditions,
publicity galleries, storyboards for "Jimmy Drives Gil Crazy," a wrap
reel, an episode of Greg The Bunny's old Independent Film Channel (IFC)
show called "Reality," and at least one Easter egg that I discovered
featuring Tardy the Turtle putting actress Dina Waters into absolute hysterics.
And then to wrap it up, a thirty-minute mock/documentary called "The Humans
Behind the Fabricated Americans," featuring behind-the-scene interviews
with cast, crew, and puppeteers discussing the public-access television roots of
Greg The Bunny and its transition to national television. If that isn't a
fan-freaking-tastic offering of extra features for a DVD, I have no idea what
is.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

I genuinely liked Greg The Bunny, but in all fairness, it did have its
weak points. It had great gags, incredibly dirty and suggestive double entendres
aplenty, and a wonderfully dysfunctional sense of humor…but so did my
crazy uncle, and I sure didn't hang out with him every day. For every hilarious
joke the show lands on target comes a joke that misses its mark by a wide berth;
worse, some of the gags simply get tired over long repetition. The puppets being
all dirty and sexual was cute at first, but soon became almost a cliché
upon itself near the end.

But more importantly, watching the series again for the first time since its
original airing, I noticed the exact same problem that I did back then: The show
simply takes too long to get really funny. Oh sure, the first episodes are not
without their charm, very witty and occasionally crude, all very enjoyable. But
ironically, the show really hit its stride right around the point where Fox
execs unceremoniously yanked it off the airwaves, which must be a secret
agreement made between all Fox executives and their creative consultants for all
of their fledgling television productions. Kind of like how you need to kill
every single one of your enemy's children, because they will grow up, become
strong, and come back to seek revenge. They've all seen The Godfather. Don't kid yourself.

Also, I don't like Eugene Levy. Never have, never will, in any role. But
Greg The Bunny is hardly to blame for this intense hatred, for the
terrible bile rising in my throat like boiling stagnant water, the dislike
burning like a hemorrhoid on my brain, like a plague on my very desire to keep
liv…

Ahem. Sorry. It's my problem, and I'm getting counseling for it.

Closing Statement

Greg The Bunny may be awkward, dirty, and crude, but it is definitely
a hysterically funny show that gets better with each viewing, a fact obvious to
anybody that gave it a chance and stuck through the first few clumsy
episodes…which clearly not enough people did (including the
"wise" people at Fox). A shame, really.

But, as a wise man once said: cancelled Fox television shows never really
die…they just come out on DVD eighteen months later. Serious thumbs down
on Fox for canning yet another show with immeasurable potential, but by putting
out such a kick-ass DVD, they partially make up for this grievous blunder.

The Verdict

The DVD practically pays for itself if only to see dozens of police officers
beating Cory Feldman with nightsticks whilst the Goonies theme song plays
in the background.